The electromagnetic railgun is a long-range naval gun that will fire precision-guided hypervelocity projectiles to ranges greater than 200 nautical miles.
Bombers equipped with precision-guided conventional munitions are the obvious answer, so long as they have sufficient range, payload and survivability features.
It was an open secret, after the Kosovo war, that American commanders were disappointed by their allies' lack of precision-guided weapons, electronic-warfare equipment and secure communications.
Congress was somewhat mollified about all the money that had been wasted when the Army promised to use Crusader technology in a cheaper, more deployable gun employing precision-guided rounds.
The chief of naval operations says stocks of precision- guided munitions -- the wonder-weapon of choice in Kosovo and Iraq -- are "below the current war fighting requirement, " which poses a "major risk" to U.S. forces.